Friday, July 31, 2009

Cravings, cravings, and more cravings

Yay! I'm finally reaching the fun part of being pregnant - CRAVINGS. They just started last week (week 9) and though they aren't as outlandish as the TV shows that show pregnant women asking for ice cream with pickles on top, they're definitely out of the blue for me.

I've already harassed my husband into getting me a big mac meal. It was good going down, but oh the horror of heartburn after! ugh! On another occasion I just HAD to have a whopper Jr. that turned out to be GROSS and the heartburn soon followed. I went thru a day of desperately needing homemade guacamole. Then for two days I just HAD to have homemade spinach dip. And the crazy thing about the cravings is that if you ask me in a couple of days if I wanna try it again, it'll turn my stomach just thinking about it LOL Last night I was desperate to make a 7 layer Mexican bean dip. So I convinced my hubby to come with me to the market to get all of the ingredients. I also craved those fruit flavored Ices that are in the long plastic skinny bag (I haven't had those since I was 12!) I ate the bean dip and blechh!! all it did was give me some wicked gas! (My poor husband is not too happy with that pregnancy symptom by the way) And now, as I'm typing, I'm finally enjoying a blue raspberry flavored ice. How refreshing! :)

I'll tell you one thing though, my husband is loving these cravings just as much as I am. As you may have imagined, he is right beside me snacking on all sorts of things too. I keep telling him that he's going to gain 30 lbs of pregnancy weight with me! The only thing is, he's not going to be able to deliver half of that weight come February LOL I guess that's a lesson he'll just have to learn the hard way!

And the beat goes on...

So here we are, a month later already! I am 10 weeks pregnant today. Time goes by so quickly! This month has really been a trip though. Here is the rundown:

Week 6:
Remember the spotting I had after the last ultrasound? Well my spotting got a lot worse and I was convinced that I had lost the baby. Needless to say, I was a total wreck. I ended up right back at the ER just to find out that the baby was fine and they could not tell where the bleeding was coming from. The baby's heart had even start beating already! How amazing! So I continued to deal with the unexplained spotting, but then the SEVERE morning sickness kicked in. I mean SEVERE... can't eat, can't drink, throwing up, etc. I had NO IDEA pregnancy was going to be like this! I lost 6 lbs this month! And for a curvaceous woman like me, you'd think I'd be excited LOL but that isn't the way you wanna lose a couple of pounds, Gee Wiz! I was able to get thru week 6 with tons of prayer, Gatorade, and chicken soup. Thank God!

Week 7:
The morning sickness was finally letting up but I still was nauseous most of the day. By the way, it really should be called "All Day Sickness" cuz that feeling hits you at the most inopportune times! The spotting finally stopped and I had another ultrasound by this amazing Christian ultrasound tech who located the bleed. I have a subchorionic hematoma. (I know, I know, a subchor wha wha?) Apparently sometimes during implantation, a little blood gets trapped under the uterine wall and creates a little blood clot. Mine was only 1 cm and the tech reassured me that it was no where near the baby and would go away on it's own. Again, praise God! By the way, we got to see our little bean again and it's heart beat was about 132bpm! So cute!

Week 8-9:
Still nauseous but again, it's getting better. I'm peeing like a racehorse which can get annoying, but still pretty funny hehe. I was also getting cramps that felt like Aunt Flo was coming which made me nervous but my DR said that was normal since my uterus is stretching. Somewhere around 9 weeks, my morning sickness/nausea stopped and I completely had a meltdown thinking that it was too early for it to stop. I always heard that it didn't stop until 12 weeks so again I was sure something was wrong. (I really need to stop being so negative - therapy much?!) But after much research and speaking to other pregnant women who also had the same concern, I found out that pregnancy symptoms can wane anywhere from 9 weeks - 12 weeks and sometimes they'll go away one week, then return another week, etc. So I decided not to flip out too much and just be calm and wait until I can see the baby again at another ultrasound. :)

So here we are, Week 10, and in one week we'll be able to see our little bundle o' joy again! And guess what! This time it'll actually look like a real baby! How cool is that! The other sonograms I got showed a little blob with a heartbeat. Very cute but still didn't feel completely real yet. I'm sure that it'll hit my husband and I big time when we actually see the shape of a head and little arms and legs! How amazing is this whole experience! This is definitely a blessing!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

And so the stress begins - and hopefully ends...

So Monday I was having some back pains, and pains in my left side. Apparently I convinced myself that I was having an ectopic pregnancy. I'm seriously a worry wart like that. Anyway, I decided to go to the ER just to check everything out. Bad idea!

I got there and they drew some blood to check my HcG levels (pregnancy hormones) and then immediately hooked me up to an IV... even though I tried to refuse the IV on a number of occasions. Here I am on a cot, in a backless hospital gown attached to an IV drip. To make matters worse, my nurse disappeared for two hours! So by the time the IV drip was finished, I had to pee like a racehorse! Which I later learned was the point of the IV so they could do a sonogram.

Anyway, so my nurse never came back to check on me so I kept asking passers by to get my nurse. Embarrassing! I'm sitting there, pulling back that curtain thingy, asking anyone I can see to call my nurse. And they each would come back and say "She said she's coming". Well my friends, she never came. I thought I was about to go into hysteria my bladder was so full and I managed to flag down another nurse who quickly had me sent to the ultrasound department. I probably could have gone a lot sooner if my nurse took the time to return, gee wiz!

Good News: I get the sonogram done and I got to see my little bean! No heartbeat yet, but he was in the right place and all looked well so far.

Bad News: They had to to a transvaginal (ouch) ultrasound since I'm so early in my pregnancy and that was uncomfortable! Never mind the fact that now I am having some pink/tan spotting which I was told is caused by the ultrasound irritating the cervix. Why do I put myself through these things?!?

Bad News that turned to Good News: So after the ultrasound, the ER doctor told me that all looked well except my HcG levels... which were a ridiculous 136,000! Last week at my doctor's office, they were around 2500. What the! So he told me that I had to see my own doctor in the next couple of days. Needless to say I was scared out of my wits. I told my husband and he started getting nervous. We looked up things on the Internet (which is always a bad idea) and saw that high HcG levels are related to down syndrome babies, or molar pregnancies (where the baby never forms and a growth of some sort forms instead b/c of chromosome issues) So that evening I couldn't eat or sleep, seriously worried about that stupid number. I didn't understand how everything could look good on the ultrasound but my numbers could be so off. I decided (after much coaxing from my husband and my message board friends) to call the hospital and ask that they pull my chart again to verify. Guess what? My HcG was NOT 136,000 but 13,600! And that is totally normal! Apparently the Dr. seemed to have seen an extra zero some how.

You know, I should have known something was wrong with the ER Dr. because he had this eye twitch. And I'm not trying to discriminate against eye twitchers but it was so bad that he had to literally put my chart up to his nose to read the results. So no wonder he read it wrong! He probably was seeing double or something! Gosh!

At this point I won't be going out of my way to check anything out because it just stresses me out more! And now I have this annoying spotting thing going on that I didn't have before the ultrasound. It's been two days and it's still there. I'm hoping everything is okay but I was warned by my personal Dr. and the ultrasound technician that this would happen and it was nothing to be alarmed about.

So all's well that end's well! I even got to take home a little ultrasound pic of my little bean! My husband was so excited!